The planned route, shown as a screenshot from the Alltrails App
The traditional custodians of this area are the Yugambeh people who call the pinnacle Kundhikulli, meaning "rock in the shape of a boat".
The volcanic plug was since named after Sir Dr Earle Christmas Grafton Page (cool name, hey?). He was born in Grafton and became a prominent politician who purchased the land to run cattle and harvested timber. Earle was also Caretaker Prime Minister of Australia for 19 days back in 1939. (Information source: Gold Coast Chronicles).
To access the Pinnacle we had to cross a small shallow creek then just follow the fire trail and navigate our way through a number of track junctions.
According to the track notes we'd found on the Aussie Bushwalks website, we were looking for a tree with scratch marks in it. But when we got to this one and we looked at the topographic map, it didn't look like the route that Alltrails suggested for getting to the top. My partner suggested that taking this track would lead us to the steepest and hardest way to get up there and we wanted a hard hike, not an impossible one.
Less than 1km further up the hill we found the correct single track to take marked by a tree with "PP" (for "Pages Pinnacle") and a rock cairn (deliberate pile of rocks balanced on top of one another). We were confident we were in the right place, so we took this path.
And soon enough it lead us here! This is my partner crossing the rocky, exposed ridge.
Crossing the ridge was pretty technical!
Is this the "boat rock"? Either way, it's gorgeous!
This was the best lookout spot on top of the Pinnacle.
Hinze Dam (in the background) is part of the Advancetown Lake system. No swimming allowed as it is the entire water supply for the Gold Coast.
A very cool, ultra small, 1cm Ladybug (aka Ladybeetle or Ladybird). We'd never seen one this colour before!
All this technical terrain was hard work on my dodgy ankle.
Thankfully, we found a short cut on the way back down.
This is the Strava map of what we actually did. (Photo credit: Strava)
We had a well-earned rest at the top as we soaked up the view and had some snacks before descending again. (Photo credit: Strava)
Overall, we enjoyed it. We'd do it again, though it was already quite hot by the time we finished. So starting early was a good plan!
